One advantage of digital cameras over film based cameras is that digital cameras have the ability to associate metadata with a captured image that may later be accessed by a viewer. For example, once the digital image has been transferred from the digital camera to a PC and displayed, a user may also view information about the image, such as date and time of capture, the name of the image, and image size, for instance. Metadata may be either stored with the image or stored separately in a separate database. If the metadata is stored with the image, then the metadata is typically stored as tags within the image file of the captured image.
For example, a standards organization referred to as the Digital Imaging Group (DIG) has developed a DIG35 Metadata Specification that provides a set of metadata definitions to the imaging industry. The DIG35 metadata specification for describing elements of an image is independent of the imaging application or the image file format used.
By associating metadata with digital images, every image that is uploaded to the Internet and shared with others around the globe may be its own stand-alone catalog record that can be used by each recipient for a variety of purposes.
Businesses, professionals and consumers can all utilize metadata in order to manage images. One example use of metadata is professional photographers associating information about camera settings, copyright information and image manipulation techniques within the image in order to recreate images and document their work. Additionally, metadata enables consumers to share their captured experiences by using metadata to tell the story or narration behind their images. For example, users may use image-editing software on their PC to add explanatory captions to each photo from their vacation, and then upload those photos to a photo-sharing website. Assuming the photo website was DIG35 compatible, the photo website would understand and save all the captions. Friends and family may then access the photo website and not only see the pictures, but read and/or hear the story and history behind each image by accessing the metadata.
The assignee of the present application has developed an operating system for digital cameras that generates digital image files that include metadata. Some of the metadata is populated automatically by the camera upon image capture with data describing various attributes of the image and the camera. Other metadata may be manually entered by the user, such as image names, categories and captions. Still other metadata may be populated by software programs that run on the camera.
Although these methods effectively populate the metadata, they have disadvantages. The disadvantage with populating the metadata manually is that the user must retype the information for each image. When providing information for large numbers of images, manually entering the data for each image is extremely tedious and time-consuming for the user, especially when the images share many of the same characteristics. This problem can be alleviated by running a program on the camera that automatically populates the metadata with the desired data. However, if the user uses a different camera and doesn't have the program handy, the user must resort to the manual method.
Accordingly, what is needed is an improved method and system for merging metadata with images. The present invention addresses such a need.